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Wonderful photography, very violent and just bizzare. Not sure if I liked it but was worth watching in a cinema for the photography alone. Gosling's poker face worked really well in this film but I think I prefered his Place Beyond the Pines.

Got round to watching Star Trek Into Darkness. It was an enjoyable and fun romp...that took remaking a certain other film a bit too much to heart. I want to get into a long rant about what I thought was wrong with it, but I'm trying to separate my thoughts invoked from that other film and to put this one squarely alone. I can't do that, however. It's just too obviously connected. I thought, thematically and narratively, some parts were a bit cheap, played off nostalgia way too much or that there was just a general air of "Everything must go wrong!" and it got a bit tiring. I'm not saying don't pay homage to that which you're taking from, but maybe look at why that certain thing has persisted, why it's regarded so highly. When the yell happened, I "Ha'd". I shouldn't have done that. It was just too obvious.

But it was enjoyable and I'm sure I'll watch the next one.

EDIT: Heh, just re-read Timofee's post and I pretty much agree. I will say though that whilst I enjoyed watching Cumberbatch, I was not at all sold on who he was playing.

Last night I watched Iron Sky. It does a good job of not taking itself seriously (like, at all); this is a good thing considering the antagonists are Moon Nazis. Turn your brain off and enjoy the camp for a good time with this movie.

Man of Steel, yesterday. I gotta be honest with you, I loved the fights. Best action I've seen on screen this year, even it is just CGI up the ass (what isn't nowadays?). The thing is about this movie is that Nolan and Goyer doesn't seem to know what to tell anymore in this story. The pacing was terrible with the flashbacks just popping up in the middle of a scene without some proper buildup and man, I like Superman stories but this one's just lacking in heart. And colour. It took itself too seriously at times and it just forgets to show how Superman doesn't just help people but saves them. Sure, there are scenes where he does that but it felt like he just does it for the sake of doing. Everything felt... empty.

In short, disappointed but I didn't leave the cinema with bitter regret. It's a decent summer flick but nothing really special

Last night I watched Iron Sky. It does a good job of not taking itself seriously (like, at all); this is a good thing considering the antagonists are Moon Nazis. Turn your brain off and enjoy the camp for a good time with this movie.

As much as I triend and wanted to, I just couldn't enjoy that movie. The humour just wasn't there for me, it tried too hard.

A middle-aged police captain Konakawa sought help from an unlicensed psychotherapist, a bright girl Paprika, treating the captain's emotional problem by a new, still being tested device called DC mini. The device enabled Paprika to dream with Konakawa, and recorded the co-dream into her computer for further analysis. Paprika was referred to by Dr. Shima, a friend of Konakawa since they were in the same college (judging from old age of Shima, I think Shima had been Konakawa's teacher, not schoolmate). Shima was chief of a psychology research institute. Turns out Paprika was an avator of one of his senior subordinate, Dr. Atsuko Chiba, a very mature, polite, intellectual and gorgeous, yet so cool woman. Deep in her heart, however, she desired so much to help others in need, but she could not risk what she already owned to do so, so she created this whole different personality Paprika. In the institute she with her subordinate Dr. Tokita, a very fat boy, developed this new system called DC mini so that people could share their dream.

Here's the problem. Three prototypes were stolen, and Tokita had not yet programmed a access security system for the devices. Therefore, the thief would be able to link the device with psychotherapist machines. The team of cheif Shima, Chiba and Tokita tried to investigate without alerting anyone, but chairman of the institute for some reason was informed before hand. Chairman didn't trust the technology, always suggested to terminate the research. To make thing worse, Shima became the first victim of the thievery, hallucinated and jumped out of a window from some ten floors, almost killed himself. That says someone had been merging dreams of different people, and implanted them into the targeted victims even when they were awake. During the investigation, Tokita's assistant Himuro became their prime suspect, and later they found him committed suicide by jumping in a theme park he used to visit when he was a kid, but was closed by then. Fortunately Himuro survived and they recovered one of the three stolen DC mini. Yet more workers in the institute became victims. The team brought in detective Konakawa into investigation, since they were struggling to get the government's approval for introducing the device amid this crisis (of course Chiba knew Konakawa, but she managed to keep her cool). Someone out there were still using DC mini to create chaos. With Himuro already in his deep dream, who was the true culprit?

I guess they are trying to suggest that these weapons are home-made, cobbled together things. They've chosen the classic rebel weapon - the AK47- and given it a MacGyver look. Compare and contrast to this gun, presumably belonging to the bad-guys.

I guess they are trying to suggest that these weapons are home-made, cobbled together things. They've chosen the classic rebel weapon - the AK47- and given it a MacGyver look. Compare and contrast to this gun, presumably belonging to the bad-guys.

Wonder how many hours he had to grind to get that, or did he buy a shortcut pack?

Woody Harrelson is, as always, great. He stole every scene where he was actually allowed to say anything. And the kid from Zombieland is still an annoying Michael Cera ripoff (which is pretty pathetic in and of itself), but he does good with Woody Harrelson, so yeah. Franco's brother and whatsherface are, as always, horrifyingly bad actors (in Franco's case, I suspect it is genetic :p) who manage to be tolerable only when paired with a particularly strong script that doesn't need much acting to get the point across. Ruffalo and Melanie Laurent did well with the script they had, but it was a pretty weak script.
Morgan Freeman, as always, acts the crap out of even the worst scripts. And I suspect he chooses to do movies with horrifyingly bad scripts because he thinks it is funny to take insanely one dimensional characters and make them passable. Plus, money (which I think is why Michael Caine was there).

As for the movie itself: I think the problem is the writers weren't sure what movie they were making. In a nutshell, the premise is: A bunch of second-rate magicians/performers are invited to an abandoned apartment which contains information on a series of shows to put on. A year later, they are putting on the shows which involve robbing banks and redistributing the wealth from the wealthy to the poor. Ruffalo and Laurent are an FBI and Interpol agent respectively who are tasked with arresting the magicians for their crimes. And Morgan Freeman is in charge of explaining every single second of the movie so that viewers can follow along.

The problem is, the genre changes every few minutes, and not in a good way (see Doomsday which did a great job of randomly changing genres for poops and giggles). At the start it seems like an "is it magic, or is it mundane" story. Then Morgan Freeman explains why it is mundane. Then it becomes a "Can Ruffalo and Laurent make a case against them?". And that is handled incredibly stupidly ("Rather than actually investigate this at all, just let us go because CLEARLY the only way to catch us for a crime we admit committing and did in front of thousands of witnesses is to admit magic exists. Oh, you are going to investigate and explain everything after we leave? Oh well, it isn't like you can legally hold us without pressing charges for 24 hours. Especially when it will only take about 20 minutes to figure out what happened. And that includes taking a bathroom break and hitting on Melanie Laurent because, who wouldn't?"). Then, with absolutely nothing else changing other than Ruffalo acting angry and Melanie Laurent sitting with her thumb up her ass, it becomes a movie about chasing criminals. And then it just gets REALLY stupid and random as you find out that everything was a huge conspiracy and meticulously planned series of events that would make even David Xanatos say "Seriously?"

That being said, there were a few things I caught while I still thought it would be a mystery worth trying to solve on my own that were never touched on, so it might end up being a good film with the director's cut that was just cut down for the masses to enjoy.

As a mindless film, it had enough jokes and tense scenes that I would recommend it. But if you prefer mysteries to at least attempt to be a mystery (think BBC Sherlock), then this will just annoy you.

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Saw Man of Steel. It's ridiculous without realising it or intending to be.

The baddies are space nazies in skeleton outfits and the main enemy looks like Fred Durst as a 50 year old.

Never seen a film before which uses so much of the dialogue to explain what's going on, just in case you couldn't follow it.

If you like people smashing each other through buildings for an hour while coming out with dialogue as good as "There's only one way this ends; either you die, or I do", without a hint of it all recognising how silly it is (ala The Avengers) I suppose it must be a hell of a film, because there's fuck loads of both